The Radiohead guitarist makes a foray into classical music with his first performance as the BBC Concert Orchestra's new composer in residence.

(Please note this transcript of the panel's review is taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

TOM SUTCLIFFE:

Hari Kunzru, we saw or listened to that performance in slightly unusual conditions. We went to the rehearsal, so it was slightly stop-start, but I thought it was fascinating to see the putting together of a piece like that?

HARI KUNZRU:

Absolutely. The nuts and bolts of were wonderful to watch. He is in a very interesting position, Jonny Greenwood. He is the man who provides this sort of epic scope that Radiohead are very well known for, but has a reasonably cast-iron reputation as someone who is interested in the sort of highways and byways of 20th century classical music, especially involving electronic instruments. But here his real hero became apparent to me, Bernard Herman, the Psycho composer. Cinematic music that seems to me to be crying out for cinematic input.

SUTCLIFFE:

Cinema has been one of the ways in which contemporary music has been smuggled out to a larger audience?

KUNZRU:

Herman is churning out Schjonberg...

SUTCLIFFE:

I found myself listening to this clutching at cinematic analogies trying to get some sort of grip on it?

PAULIN:

I thought it was like a work in progress. It had a wonderful openness, and then a feeling of sirens a few blocks away - anxiety, stress, not quite adding up because it was still moving on to a theme that hadn't quite hit but was getting to, I thought. It had incredibly rhythmic second section, which is all plucked plectrums on the violin, the introduction of the iconic rock item into the classical theme.

SUTCLIFFE:

It sounded almost like a cinematic moment, a moment of tension.

KUNZRU:

He is into minimalisms, that this music is not resolving but kind of repeating itself. I am not always sure that that stasis worked, but it would be wonderful to see it as part of a whole.

SUTCLIFFE:

I was musically out of my depth so you can only give an impression. What did you think?

SARAH SANDS:

I thought it was someone who was so diffident, and became slightly irritable and people would go up and make some suggestions, and he would say, "Oh, no." I thought it was a bit of a racket to start with, and suddenly there were moments where it was just lovely.

SUTCLIFFE:

The thing you only find when you go to the rehearsal is how finely tuned the effects are. If you were sitting in a concert hall, you wouldn't know whether they had played a wrong or a right note, but when you are sitting there listening, it's so tight.

KUNZRU:

There were some of these very clear, held bowed notes, which at one point the conductor referred to as a "fog", when he was trying to explain it to the orchestra, this diffident, complex mess of different string lines, which resolved themselves into simple things.

SUTCLIFFE:

We all sat up with a certain amount of relief at that point when the conductor said "fog" because we finally had an image to connect the music with.

KUNZRU:

We have both been looking on websites...

SUTCLIFFE:

You claimed to understand it.

KUNZRU:

There was the mixing of frequencies to produce one more central frequency, and there is the central metaphor for what he is up to.

SUTCLIFFE:

It does make sense, I promise you! The transmission got through, clearly, but we don't quite understand the message! The BBC Concert Orchestra are performing in London tomorrow. Returns only for that concert, but you can hear a broadcast on Radio Three on June 24th.